retinal perspectives

learning to listen

I was thinking about all of the things I've tried in the past couple of years of working on my stuff (also known as learning more about myself and why I do the things I do).

The list is long - and goes from seemingly ordinary (like writing in a journal) to seemingly out-of-the-ordinary (like soul retrieval).

But really, it all boils down to one thing: learning to listen to myself. Not my mind - that was the only thing I ever used to listen to - but my body and my inner wisdom.

And somehow the listening slowly changed everything.

one batch of imperfection

If you were at my house right now, it would look like I am baking bread. Which I am. But what I am really doing is practicing the art of imperfection.

You see, my first batch never rose, even though I spent over a day trying to get it to do so. It was most frustrating. (I know the yeast was good because I tested it.)

This would normally make me want to give up altogether. That's what I (want to) do when I feel frustrated that I can't get something right in what seems like a "normal" amount of time.

Instead, I am trying again. Even though I had to throw out the first batch. Even though I have no guarantee that this batch will turn out any better.

I do have troubles with perfectionism. I know this. It's a very old pattern. Who knew that making bread would give me a way to play with it.

more things I've learned from the pup

While on a walk today, I was thinking I should add to my list of things I've learned from the pup. So, without further ado, here are a few more items.

The importance of napping.

It's good for the body and soul.

If you are interested in something, pursue it.

It doesn't matter whether other people think you should be interested in it or not. They're not you.

If you can't get to something directly, don't give up.

Try something else. Approach from the side. Circle around. Take a few steps back. Just try something. Anything.

Be curious.

But at the same time, be cautious when necessary. It's ok to approach things slowly.

If the weather is awful, why force yourself to go outside.

Being outside can be fun. Don't turn it into a should.

maybe it's a spiral

One of my personal missions is to remind people that they are enough. It's essentially the message behind most everything I do, even if I don't say it directly.

At the same time, I find it hard to write about my own journey toward enough-ness. I don't yet know how to write about things while I am in them and, with this particular thing, it mostly feels like I am deep underwater with no sky in sight. (They say you teach what you need to learn.)

I suspect that it is related to my struggle with worth - and to my deep core belief that I am worthless. This belief comes up again and again. Each time, I think it is dissolving. And then it comes back. It feels like an endless struggle and is immensely frustrating.

It occurred to me earlier that maybe it's really a spiral. Maybe there are layers and layers to this belief. Maybe even though the epiphany itself (I believe that I'm worthless) is the same, that doesn't mean that I'm not actually moving and making progress. I don't know for sure that this is true, but I am choosing to believe it because it feels better than not believing it.

Since I can't really write about my own journey to enough-ness just yet, I thought I'd share something that popped into my head late Monday night. As it turns out, writing about something while I am in the thick of it - even if not directly - is surprisingly therapeutic. And that, I think, is worth mentioning.

the mean reds

i got nattering gnats that pinch and pry
i got parched sunbeams that drink me dry

i got restless train tracks that go nowhere
i got lily-white preachers that smell like a snare

i hear it come and it's always the same
i shake my fist at the pouring rain

i got crosses, canyons, desert, and lace
i got maple winters burnt by fate

i got vulture voices hollow and lack
i got drowned old saints in a flaming pack

i hear it come and it's always the same
i shake my fist at the pouring rain

i got selfish bumblebees buried alive
i got chains of worth stretched nine to five

i got crisscrossed pockets, five soon late
i got hidden fog that jumps its gate

i hear it come and it's always the same
i shake my fist at the pouring rain

i hear it come but it's never the same
i stretch my hands out toward the rain

maybe start with noticing

I know it can be scary to think about beginning to give yourself what you need and want.

It's scary in general. (Most of us learned that giving to our own self is not okay.) It's scary because it seems so huge. (We're sure that the list is endless and the items on the list are huge and impossible.) It's scary because it feels endless. (We're sure that once we start giving, it'll go on forever and we won't be able to do anything else.)

My current idea-in-practice is that even just paying attention and noticing what you need is enough to begin to change things. Sometimes it feels easier and safer to commit to paying attention than it is to commit to taking action.

I mentioned earlier this week that I needed rest. What I didn't mention is that I have been lacking in focus and ideas for work lately and was getting really frustrated. Even so, I decided yesterday that I would really try to commit to taking care of myself. Today, my motivation and ideas are back again. And I remembered something that showed up in my journal after a Shiva Nata session: "Sweetie, you need rest. I know you are wanting to write something business-y here but it's not going to happen. You and your business need rest."

I didn't get any extra rest. But I did notice last night when I grew tired, even though I still felt unable to go to bed until I did a bit more work. Hence my new idea-in-practice, because clearly the noticing was useful in and of itself.

It's wonderful to feel heard and understood. It occurs to me that paying attention and noticing what you need, even if you can't give it to yourself just yet, is actually a way of doing just that.

(missing) a feeling of safety

I don't quite know what's going on but I have epiphanies rolling in left and right these days. I have noticed that my Reiki treatments (for myself) seem more intense, and I have been practicing Shiva Nata regularly, so I suppose it's to be expected. It's just that it's a bit overwhelming. They're all huge. They're all important. And they're all getting at deeper reasons for why I do the things I do (or don't do).

I decided that my focus for the month would be trust. I have a lot of issues with trust. It's important and useful. It's probably worth some focus.

The one message I keep getting consistently is that I need rest. I need rest in general. I need rest to process and integrate the epiphanies. I need rest to discover what's next. And yet, I resist. I don't trust the message. Plus, I don't know how to rest. Whenever I think I'm resting, I'm really doing things in my head or I'm worrying about all the things I think I should be doing instead of resting.

I was talking to a friend and she mentioned something about resting being connected to safety. Something about that thought rang true.

And then that night, while I was trying to sleep, it hit me.

I don't feel safe. Ever. Because once upon a time, in a moment when I felt safe (and was naked and vulnerable, no less), someone I trusted poured boiling water on me.

The me of now knows that it was an accident. But the me of then is small and scared and sees everything through a filter of fear. She thinks that something bad could happen to me at any moment. She believes that safety and vulnerability and trust lead to pain. And she knows that since she cannot control everything, I am never safe.

No wonder I can't rest.

No wonder trust keeps coming up as an issue.

No wonder money and weight keep coming up as issues (both of which represent safety to me, in varying forms).

I must confess that I found this very fascinating. I also didn't really know what to do with it, so I took it to my BodyTalk session later that week and told the practitioner about it. Along with doing the session itself, she suggested that I look for moments when I feel safe and take note of them so that it becomes easier to remember what safety actually feels like.

So, that's what I'm doing. I'm looking for safety.

giving away my power

I have been trying to write this post all day. Well, off and on. Even when it makes sense in my head, the sense does not translate well to paper. As the very wise Briana says, sometimes epiphanies resist our attempts to translate them into something clear and concise.

As a matter of fact, I've sort of been working on this post for months. I have a draft version of it somewhere; it never felt fully formed enough to publish. But for some reason, it is a post that must be written. Even if not as fully or as clearly and concisely as I would wish.

So.

When I was growing up, I gave away most of my power. I don't know if the who or what is particularly important. Really, it was to pretty much everyone but me, though church and family were the primary ones. (I suspect this is true for many people.)

When I say that I gave away my power, I mean that things were vetted against whether they were acceptable to someone else. It didn't really matter what I felt or thought or wanted to do, except as it fit under the prevailing order.

After I graduated from college, I moved far away. And then I got my Atlas pup. The epiphany I had the other day was that I happily gave control of my life over to Atlas because the pattern was familiar and comfortable and felt safe.

(In hindsight, this was actually rather clever because he so wonderfully models the importance of listening to your self and knowing that you are worth listening to.)

The funny thing about this is that when I started writing this post months ago, I thought I had had my epiphany. I totally missed the Atlas piece of it.

Now, I know that the next step is to continue to learn how to slow down and listen to what feels right to me. I am learning to do this in some areas. I need to learn to do this everywhere.

This feels horribly scary. It feels like my own version of "the buck stops here". There are so many fears. The fear of visibility. The fear of rejection. The fear of isolation. All of these fears trying to keep me safe.

At the same time, I can see that I will become more fully myself in the process. So there is that.

slow is good

The message I keep getting, in oh-so-many forms, is that things are moving at the perfect pace for me. That slow consistent progress is good. That I need to learn the value of periods of activity and periods of rest.

Part of me really believes this. Part of me doesn't. But even the part of me that believes it finds it really hard to trust that it is so.

The message that faster is better is everywhere. It is hard to miss. Faster is better. Do more in less time. Do more things at once. Get "there" more quickly.

To make matters worse, I just realized that I am coming out of ten years in high-tech, where that message is even more prevalent. Faster is always better. Always. (Ok, so I do occasionally wince at the slowness of my seven year old computer, but still.)

This makes sense now. It is no wonder that I have trouble trusting that my current pace really is good. And by good, I mean right for me.

By the way, I am definitely not saying that slow is inherently good or that fast is inherently good, just that fast isn't necessarily always better. At least for me.

This also explains why I do not like practicing Shiva Nata slowly. So, I think I will start to do the occasional slow practice, and see what happens.

Want to hear something funny? Before I wrote this post, I practiced Shiva Nata with the intention that I receive love and clarity around a blog post. I meant around the blog post that I was going to publish today but decided it needed one last quick edit. Instead, this post came into my mind. Like I said, the message keeps coming up.

money, money, money

Apparently I have lots of thoughts about money. The latest one happens to be that it is not possible to make enough money to live on while doing the things I love. (I suppose it's a good thing I didn't know I had this belief until *after* I left the day job. Oy.)

I'm a little fuzzy on where this thought came from but I suspect it has something to do with knowing that I am supposed to have a job with benefits. And that since I am supposed to have a job with benefits, there must be a reason for that - like maybe it's the only way to make enough money to live on. Who knows. I am not interested enough to find out.

I am more interested in playing with this. After I practiced Shiva Nata, I wrote, "What do I need to do to shift this pattern or to play with it a little?" into my journal. My suggestion (to myself) was to watch for people who are doing what they love and making a living and make mental notes each time I find one.

This seems a little tricky because how do you really know for sure unless you know the person. Regardless, I am going to try it. I do not think this is a particularly useful belief for me to have and I suspect that it is one that has the potential to actually derail my efforts to make a living doing the things I love. Besides, I will think my mental notes are correct - and that's what matters, right?

what I like

Ever since I read The Happiness Project, I've been thinking about what I actually like and what actually makes me happy, versus what I think I like and what I think makes me happy.

For example, whenever I write a list of dreams, one of the things I list is that I want to live in Italy for three months every year. (No doubt inspired by an intense love for Italy as well as years of reading Under the Tuscan Sun.) It's a lovely dream.

Except I have a dog. And I can't imagine not having a dog. And I can no more imagine flying my dog to Italy than I can leaving him (or her) behind. In other words, my dream wouldn't really make me happy.

I do, however, like longer vacations. Three months is definitely too long. Six weeks was too long. But maybe one month. Or two weeks. I also like the idea of a home-away-from-home-with-dog within driving distance. Those things would make me happy.

On a similar note, I like the idea of a truly mobile business. That was part of the appeal of self-employment. I like the idea of traveling around and working from wherever I am. The teeny tiny thought that crept into my mind when I decided to open an etsy shop was, "Oh no! Now I'm not mobile!"

Except I don't want to be mobile. I like my home. I like being home. I don't want to move away from Oregon. And as we've already discovered, I don't want to travel and travel and travel. This thing that I think would make me happy would make me very unhappy.

On the other hand, I like sending presents to people. I like packaging them. I like having a stash of supplies that I can use to package them. I like sending them out. It all makes me very happy.

On a smaller scale .. Hmmmm. For some reason, I'm drawing a blank on smaller scale examples right now. That aside, I am finding the act of thinking about this and noticing it to be awfully helpful in making sure that I spend more time doing the things that really do make me happy and less time wishing I would do the things that I only think will make me happy.